McCarthy was perhaps the greatest living American writer until his passing on June 13, 2023. Born in 1933, he published Stella Maris in December 2022, which was his final work and a companion piece to The Passenger, released just six weeks prior.
Stella Maris is a brief work composed entirely of dialogue between Alicia Western—"a twenty-year-old Jewish-Caucasian female. Attractive, possibly anorexic. She arrived at the facility six days ago, seemingly by bus and without luggage"—and her therapist. Their discussions span topics from her life and traumas to the foundations of mathematics, Los Alamos, solipsism, Platonism, and Amati violins, to name a few.
While McCarthy was neither a mathematician nor a physicist, he spent considerable time with scientists at the Santa Fe Institute. As a result, his references to math, logic, or physics never seem amiss.
I first read The Passenger, then read Stella Maris — twice. I reread The Passenger once and read Stella Maris twice. And I plan to read it yet again. McCarthy, much like Melville and Twain, is a timeless author.
His works may require patience and effort to appreciate fully, but those who persevere will find the experience deeply rewarding.
'Cormac McCarthy was such a virtuoso, his language was so rich and new . . . McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute. His sentences were astonishing.' - Anne Enright
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'A drought-busting, brain-vexing double act' - Guardian
Alicia Western is the following: Twenty years old. A brilliant mathematician at the University of Chicago. And a paranoid schizophrenic who does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby.
Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia's psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, profoundly moving companion to The Passenger. It is a powerful enquiry that…
I first read Rich's book ten years ago, and it forever changed my engineering approach.
Skunk Works was Lockheed Martin's advanced aircraft development program. It achieved unprecedented efficiency and innovation due to its selective staffing, minimal bureaucracy, and strong leadership.
Can you believe the U-2 spy plane was constructed in only 9 months? This was in 1955, without computers or any digital tools. Nowadays, 9 months is just about the time required for a medium-sized software development project.
Here's an excerpt from the book that I often revisit where Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works' first director) imparts wisdom to Ben Rich (the book's author and its second director) regarding leadership:
"I'll teach you all you need to know about running a company in one afternoon, and we'll both go home early to boot. You don't need Harvard to teach you that. It's more important to listen than to talk. You can get straight A's from all your Harvard profs, but you'll never make the grade unless you are decisive: Even a timely wrong decision is better than no decision. The final thing you'll need to know is don't half-heartedly wound problems - kill them. That's all there is to it."
SKUNK WORKS is the true story, told for the first time, of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the story of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a high-stakes drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds. SKUNK WORKS is dramatic and immediate. Direct from the cockpits of these astonishing aircraft - U-2 spy-plane, SR-71 Blackbird and F-117 Stealth Fighter. It is a tribute to genius in the unrelenting contest for mastery of the…
Fukuyama stands as one of the foremost political scientists of our times and has studied under Samuel P. Huntington, one of the most influential political scientists of the 20th century in the West.
Despite its intellectual rigor and erudition, the book demands minimal prior knowledge and eschews the obscurity and pedantry sometimes found in similar works.
From the premise that political stability requires three pillars (state organization, accountability, and the rule of law), Fukuyama takes the reader through BC era China and India, Muslim states, and Middle Ages Europe to illustrate his points with concrete examples. Fukuyama highlights the perils of simplified theories and explanations, acknowledging the complexity of each unique situation and the limited information available to comprehend it fully.
Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins.
Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of Political Order is…
This practical guide to modern encryption breaks down the fundamental mathematical concepts at the heart of cryptography without shying away from meaty discussions of how they work. You’ll learn about authenticated encryption, secure randomness, public-key techniques such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography, as well as advanced topics like post-quantum cryptography and multi-party computation.
